Woman pleads no contest to role in Walmart robbery

A 20-year-old Lawrence woman pleaded no contest Wednesday afternoon to aiding a felon for her role in a December robbery at Walmart, 3300 Iowa.

Billie Jessup was initially charged with serving as a lookout for the Dec. 13, 2010, robbery, but she entered a plea Wednesday to the amended charge of knowingly harboring a person with the intent she would help them escape from arrest.

Two co-defendants, Lonnie S. Schaefer, 23, and William O. Patterson, 19, have been convicted in connection with the robbery. Patterson is serving a sentence of just less than five years in prison after he admitted to pointing a plastic BB gun at clerks in the store and taking money. Schaefer pleaded no contest in late September to robbery, conspiracy to commit robbery, conspiracy to commit aggravated arson and distribution of marijuana.

Prosecutors accuse Schaefer, before the Walmart robbery, of throwing a bottle full of flammable liquid onto the roof of McDonald’s, 1309 W. Sixth St., in an attempt to create a diversion, but the bottle only slightly burned the roof of the restaurant.

Prosecutors also accused five people, including Jessup, of serving as lookouts for the robbery. Jessup is the third of those five co-defendants to enter a plea.

Her attorney Clinton Lee said Wednesday in court that prosecutors would recommend probation. She faces a maximum sentence of 23 months in prison.

Igniting the roof of a restaurant on 6th St. to create a diversion sufficient to enable the holdup of a store on the 3300 block of South Iowa suggests the perpetrators viewed LKPD as incapable of multi-tasking. Well, they aren't the first group to incorrectly hold that belief, and they likely won't be the last.